


Rest

by StormtheCastle



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: F/F, Goodbyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 04:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20960336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormtheCastle/pseuds/StormtheCastle
Summary: Kanan is set on driving Mari away to her future overseas, but Dia is not quite adept at cutting off one of her only friends. The night before Mari is set to go, Dia comes to say goodbye.





	Rest

**Author's Note:**

> Man, I've been so busy at work, my creative energy has been super low whenever I have free time. But I really wanted to write something and this took less energy than the Guilty Party or any of my other fic ideas, so I just jotted this out real quick. Hope y'all enjoy.

Dia opens the door to the Ohara hotel’s private lounge slowly, inching it open bit by bit. When she peers inside and sees no one, she pushes it open with much more ease and enters the room.

The lights are off—it’s quite late in the evening and no guests should be there—but Dia can still make out some of the room. The shutters for the adjacent veranda’s windows are open, allowing the dim ambient light outside to filter in, giving a gloomy cast across the furniture.

Dia doesn’t bother with turning on the lights. She’s been here enough times to know where everything belongs, so she makes her way to the veranda with the ease of practice. After dodging the last chair, she steps up to the window and looks outside.

The clouds hang heavy across the sky, with only a small crack where the moon peeks through. The faint light illuminates the water where the sea looks as restless as Dia feels. She drinks in the sight before her, as dim and shapeless as it is, because she doubts she will ever have much reason to return to the Ohara hotel. Not after…

Her contemplation is interrupted by the sound of the door opening, followed by the tap of light footsteps until they halt somewhere behind her. The steady silence of before returns. After another breath, there’s a click and the lamp beside her turns on to cast a steady light into the suddenly stiflingly small space.

“You came,” Mari says, her voice somehow sounding both wary and hopeful.

“It’s tomorrow,” Dia replies. _Of course I’d come_, she thinks but doesn’t say. She turns at last to see Mari surveying her from the doorway.

Mari’s hair is still a little damp, gleaming in the light, and when Dia steps closer she can smell the muted scent of her body wash—something light and citrusy. She must have hurried over, though Dia would have been content waiting just a bit longer.

“What are you going to do?” Dia asks, because a small part of her does wonder if Mari has some sort of scheme to abandon her plans and just continue living in Japan. Maybe she was going to run away and try to camp out at the school or at Kanan’s house or at Dia’s house.

(Dia tries not to think too deeply on why she doesn’t mind that thought as much as she should.)

But Mari stares at her with her golden eyes glimmering in the light and she says, “I’ll go.” She tilts her head. “Was there any other option?” There’s a mild rebuke in her light words at Dia’s implication that she would abandon her duty but there’s also an offer in her words, a verbal hand outstretched inviting Dia to say something. To give her that other option.

In a brief flash, Dia considers it and opens her mouth, but just as quickly, she hesitates.

She thinks of Kanan’s anguish—of Kanan’s cracking façade crumpling into tears—when she decided that Mari’s future was greater than extra years together as part of Dia’s dream. (And Dia could acknowledge, in the grand scheme of things, how small school idols are for the life of the future CEO of the Ohara family business.)

(How small she and Kanan are in Mari’s future.)

Taking Dia’s silence, Mari looks away. “Why did you come here, Dia?” she asks. She sounds tired and Dia’s heart lurches a little at the sound.

She wishes she can say something that wouldn’t sound like a trite platitude, but nothing comes to mind so Dia inhales shakily and thinks instead of the reason she came. “I came to say goodbye,” she says.

Mari’s throat moves as she swallows and then she smiles, a hard, sharp curve. “Already, Dia? We can say our goodbyes tomorrow. Or are you… not going to be there?” She shakes her head and her smile becomes weaker. “Are you that eager to see me gone?”

Something shatters in Dia, then.

She grabs Mari by her shoulders and barely resists the urge to shake her—shake her until the smile is thrown off her face.

(Until she can see that Dia doesn’t want her gone.)

(She never had and never will.)

In truth, Dia had tried hard not to think about what choosing Mari’s future entailed. She envisioned it in terms of a hypothetical tomorrow years down the road, with an older Mari smiling with genuine happiness as she sauntered down some fancy European city wearing some ridiculously expensive clothing and with a stunningly handsome man on her arm.

She had not (could not) think of it in terms of the reality of the current day: of Mari leaving and never returning. Of Mari living a life without her. Of Mari being alone.

Mari’s face begins to blur, but Dia can still see the smile drop in the face of whatever she sees in Dia’s eyes.

And then Dia can barely see at all as the tears drip down, burning across her cheeks.

She feels Mari move, jolting closer and lifting her arms to press her hands against Dia’s back in a frantic attempt at comfort. “No, don’t cry,” Mari says, voice thick. “You’re supposed to be the strong one here.”

Dia laughs a little because that had been her plan as well. She had meant to let them have closure with this goodbye, to mutually resolve everything with easy smiles for Mari’s very happy(!) future overseas. She was supposed to be strong so Mari would not have any regrets about sad farewells tying her back.

But now she’s crying and she can feel herself wavering dangerously close on the edge of the truth that she _doesn’t want Mari to go_.

Mari’s hands move from her back and before Dia can even wonder, she feels them cradle her face. Thumbs brush against her cheeks and she blinks rapidly, slowly clearing her tears.

When her vision clears, she looks at Mari and sees red-rimmed eyes looking back at her. “Mari-san,” Dia whispers.

"If this is our goodbye, I don't want it to be like this,” Mari interrupts. “I don't want it to be with regrets.”

Regrets?

And then that wild, reckless girl bridges the gap between the two of them and Dia's heart stops when warm lips press against her own.

It's awkward and fumbling and half-ruined by the press of still-wet tears on their faces, but there's something sweetly wonderful to it too when Dia loses herself and tilts her head just so and their lips slide together in synch and someone gasps a little, a hiccup of laughter at the realization that both of them want this.

It's a heartbreaking realization, an aching yearning in the kiss. Because Mari cannot stay and Dia cannot leave.

It's bittersweet knowledge that they had this realization too late.

So Dia takes this single moment and engraves it in her memory. Her hands slide down Mari’s arms and she tries to remember how Mari’s skin feels. She tries to memorize Mari's voice whispering her name. The taste of her lips, the lingering smell of her body wash, the way Mari’s eyes flutter between wide-eyed wonder and narrow-eyed contentment as their lips come together again and again.

And she knows without a doubt she will remember how Mari’s arms close in around her. It’s the tight, almost desperate grip of a person who does not want to let go. A person who realizes that once they do, it will not return.

Dia realizes she’s doing the same when she tries to move forward even closer, only to push into Mari because there is no longer any space between them. It’s fine though because she wants to memorize this too. She wants to remember how Mari’s body feels against her own, this unfamiliar territory that she wishes she could have felt the dozens of times they had hugged previously throughout their childhood. They had both learned to hug from Kanan, but they had never come as close as this.

The kiss lingers until slowly, reluctantly, Dia parts their lips. On that unspoken signal, the two quietly disentangle themselves, unsure, a little embarrassed, and yearning for more.

But time is up and both sides know that Dia has to go.

(If Dia stays any longer, she will never leave.)

They don’t speak once they’ve fully separated, choosing instead to watch each other with words dying on their slightly swollen lips.

“Do you want me to walk you out?” Mari finally asks, sheepishly concerned after neither has spoken or moved in several minutes.

“No, I know the way,” Dia replies, faintly amused.

Mari laughs and Dia’s smile widens.

Neither moves.

Dia thinks about the script she had prepared for this goodbye, a speech about Mari’s future, about Aqours, and about moving on, but she thinks that perhaps this is the best ending she can ask for. “…It’s probably best if we leave this as our goodbye,” she says aloud.

Mari nods wordlessly.

Then, before Dia can second-guess herself, she turns away and heads to the door. But there is one last thing lingering on her tongue, so she stops just before the exit. "I’m… glad we got to be school idols together. I just wanted you to know that," she whispers. She doesn’t wait for a reply and opens the door leading back to the main part of the hotel.

Hard, fluorescent light fills the room. It burns Dia's eyes but she doesn’t turn away (doesn't turn back). She faces forward determinedly.

"Thank you, Dia," Mari says.

Dia bites her lip as her throat begins to close. "Goodbye, Mari."

She steps out and closes the door.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to make this OT3rd years but Kanan wasn’t fitting into this so… yeah. I’ll get something out for the three of them eventually. I do have a couple of ideas I’ve mostly outlined + of course The Guilty Party, but they’re longer form fics and that means more effort than I can expend at the moment. We’ll see which one wins at getting posted next.
> 
> I couldn’t decide which tense to write this in, so apologies for any weird tense issues.
> 
> Random stuff about this story:  
\- This was inspired by that one scene in episode 7 except no kabedon here. What a shame  
\- The title is in reference to a ‘rest’ in music.  
\- When Mari comes back during the events of the anime, she and Dia make the very mature decision of pretending this never happened. (It’s all they can think of whenever they’re together).  
\- I wanted to add a little bit extra for when Mari leaves in the helicopter but it just didn’t seem to fit into this oneshot so eh  
\- I live for the day Dia drops the honorific for her 2 gfs


End file.
